In our Lent course this year we have been wrestling with (ducking, changing the subject, throwing across the room or falling asleep over) the epistle (except it’s really a sermon) to the Hebrews (which probably means Jewish Christians in Rome). One of the topics these strange (though full of good quotations) pages of the New Testament are forcing us to reconsider is the meaning of the cross. It may be that Angela Tilby will be tackling this subject for us in her Good Friday addresses but here by way of back ground is a confirmation class type guide to the theories of the atonement or the way in which over the centuries Christians have understood the meaning of the phrase, Christ died for our sins.’ Perhaps one of the most interesting aspect of what can seem like some pretty odd (even unpleasant) ideas is the way in which they make use of historically rooted cultural images and that gives rise to the challenge to come up with a restatement of this doctrine which is for our time’ but we may have to leave that to Angela Tilby.
Christ died for our sins in what sense for’? Did he die because of our sins, which brought about his death? In other words a God who is love, enters our world and is bound to be crucified because that is what our world does to love the cross shows us what we have made of the world. Did he die for us in the sense of defending us against a spiritual force that would otherwise take away all hope of our being able to stand up against temptation and sinful action? Did he die for us in the sense of taking our place when we would otherwise have been condemned and punished for our sins? All these ideas have their part to play in what the church has taught about atonement or at-one-ment.
Atonement brings about the reconciliation between human beings and God, when their proper relationship has been broken down by sin. One literal translation of the Greek word for atonement might be the downing of otherness’. I like that because it implies that it might not only be sin which keeps us at a distance form God. Human beings and God are at a distance from one another simply by virtue of the difference between a creator and what he creates. We are at what is called an epistemic’ distance from God which means simply that knowing God or knowing how to know God is hard for us simply by virtue of our being human. And that is why Christians believe that God reveals himself to us in Jesus because being human we can only properly come to know God in and through another human being. So it is the whole of the life of Jesus and not just his death which is for’ us because the whole of that life brings about the downing of otherness’.
But back to the meaning of the cross. Hebrews has focussed our minds on the idea of the cross as a sacrifice for sin. The first readers of this work knew all about the temple and its priesthood and the animal sacrifices and Yom Kippur the feast of the atonement. For us this might seem a totally alien, even mechanistic way of dealing with sin. Yet with an imaginative effort we might be able to enter this strange world. Most Jews would only make a sacrifice on a few occasions in the year. The act involved the effort of going up to the Temple, encountering the majesty and awe of that building, choosing the best animal as victim, taking it to the priest, laying your hand on the animal’s head as you confessed the impurity or guilt for which the sacrifice was to atone. All this could create an interior response an interior healing. For the first readers of Hebrews the use of this imagery to explain the death of Jesus could have been very powerful and mind expanding. This might have been specially so because in their encounter with Greek thought and the world of pagan sacrifice these early Jewish Christians might have begun to doubt the value of Temple sacrifice (there is a strand of such doubt in Old Testament prophetic literature) and so have been ready to accept the idea of Jesus’ death as the full final sacrifice which would achieve a more real sense of forgiveness and the interior cleansing of a bad conscience.
The second source of imagery in the early church for understanding the cross comes from the battlefield and the slave market. Christ is seen as the victor over the forces of evil, the innocent victim whom Satan thinks he has defeated only to find that the tables are turned because this is the form of attack, the act of supreme folly which he least expected (compare Frodo’s self sacrifice in The Lord of the Rings which is inspired by this theme in Christian tradition). Alternatively early Christians like Paul could feel themselves to be slaves of sin (having to do its bidding even though they might know such action to be wrong). Christ’s death is the price of sin,’ the payment (to sin or the devil?) which ransoms them and buys back their freedom.
A third and later medieval theory formulated by St Anselm thought in juridical terms. According to their law codes the punishment didn’t so much fit the crime as the worth or importance of the one against whom the crime had been committed. To steal from the king was far more serious than to steal from a peasant. We cannot therefore make reparation to God for our sin, God being greater than anything we can conceive the offence is so great, the debt so enormous that only someone coming from God rather than humankind can make up for what we have done that is why Christ had to become man. We may find this theory of making satisfaction to God for what we have done curiously unforgiving. We prefer to think of the mercy rather than the justice of God. And yet in human terms we know that it is wrong to say to someone who has wronged us it doesn’t matter it wasn’t important. Sin does in some sense hurt God the cross reveals the seriousness of sin what we have done is serious and we must take responsibility for it and for Anselm only the sacrifice of the son of God is the true measure of that seriousness.
A fourth notion presented a few years later by Peter Abelard allows for a more emotional or subjective reaction to the cross, whereby the supreme demonstration, example or proof of God’s love shown in Jesus’ self sacrifice is presented as God’s way of bringing us to our senses. This view rarely met with much support as being in some sense too subjective and capable of being presented as a kind of emotional blackmail How can you treat me like this when I’ve done so much for you.’ The most moving account of Abelard’s view can be found in the novel Peter Abelard by Helen Waddell, which shows how this theory can make sense if we have ever been helped out of a sense of guilt or despair by seeing the extent to which someone else is capable of entering into our feelings and staying with them.
At the Reformation the biblical language of penal substitution re-emerges whereby Jesus is seen as voluntarily bearing for us the punishment deserved by human sin. Jesus is reckoned by God as a sinner so that we can be reckoned as righteous. Though we might find this language unconvincing it clearly had a powerful emotional effect on Martin Luther and John Wesley after him.
And that is the challenge to us of Good Friday. As we come once again to ponder the story of the crucifixion it is important that our reaction affects mind, heart and will. The purpose of the life and death of Jesus is to speak to us in such a way that what we come to understand moves our hearts in such a way that our lives are changed in some way we come to act differently as a result of what Good Friday has to say to us. The purpose of the cross is to bring us to ourselves whether we do it alone or in seeking help from another human being whom we trust. The purpose of the cross is to make Easter in us.
With my love and prayers,
Fr Stephen
The Vicar writes
Stephen Tucker